1809:
Benjamin Bathurst

Benjamin Bathurst (born
1784) was a British diplomatic envoy who
disappeared from the White Swan inn in the town of Perleberg, Germany, during the Napoleonic
Wars. A reward of ₤1,000 was offered by the British government
(a vast sum of money in those days) for information leading to his
return and was doubled by Bathurst's family and even contributed to
by Prince
Frederick of Prussia,
who took great interest in the case, to no avail. It was thought he
may have been murdered by French espionage agents who were monitoring his
activity, and Bathurst's family even went so far as to approach the
EmperorNapoleon himself about the
disappearance, who swore he knew nothing more about it than he had
read in the newspapers of the day. The town of Perleberg was also
known to have a strong criminal element at the time and another
theory was that he was snatched away and murdered, given that he
was a man of obvious wealth. In 1852, forty-one years after
Bathurst's disappearance, a male human skeleton with a fractured skull was discovered when a house some 300 m from
the White Swan inn was demolished. Bathurst's sister travelled to
Perleberg but was unable to identify the remains. Bathurst's
disappearance is referenced in several works of science fiction
and the paranormal,
most of which describe him falling into a portal leading to some other place, time,
or alternate
timeline.

1872: Mary
Celeste

The Mary
Celeste was a ship famously discovered abandoned and
unmanned in the Atlantic. The crew were never seen or heard from
again and what happened to them is the subject of much speculation.
Their fate is regarded as one of the greatest maritime mysteries of
all time.

1900:
Flannan Isles

The Flannan Isles
mystery was the disappearance of three lighthouse keepers who
vanished from their duty stations, leaving behind equipment
important to surviving the hostile conditions at that location and
time of year. However, the official explanation for the
disappearances was mundane, concluding that the men were swept out
to sea by a freak wave.

1937:
Amelia Earhart

During an attempt to make a circumnavigational flight of the
globe in 1937, Amelia Earhart disappeared over the
central Pacific Ocean near Howland Island. Fascination with her
life, career and disappearance continues to this day.

1945: Flight
19

Flight 19 was a
United States Navy training flight from Naval Air Station Fort
Lauderdale, Florida. The five TBM Avenger torpedo bombers and 14
airmen were forced to ditch in the Atlantic in high winds and heavy
seas after becoming disorientated and running out of fuel at night.
A PBM Mariner flying boat which exploded in midair and its 13 crew
were lost during the search for Flight 19. No bodies were
recovered, nor wreckage from either aircraft. The disappearance of
Flight 19 is popularly associated with the Bermuda
Triangle.

1978:
Frederick Valentich

Frederick
Valentich disappeared while piloting a Cessna 182L light
aircraft over Bass Strait to King Island, Australia. In his last
radio contact Valentich reported an unusual aircraft was following
his, and his last words were "It is hovering and it's not an
aircraft". No trace of Valentich or his aircraft was ever found,
and an Australian Department of Transport investigation concluded
that the reason for the disappearance could not be determined.

Fiction

Mary
Rose

Mary
Rose is a play by James M. Barrie
(author of Peter
Pan) which tells the bizarre fictional story of a girl who
vanishes twice. As a child, Mary Rose's father takes her to a
remote Scottish island. While she is briefly out of her father's
sight, Mary Rose vanishes. The entire island is searched
exhaustively. Twenty-one days later, Mary Rose reappears as
mysteriously as she disappeared ... but she shows no effects of
having been gone for three weeks, and she has no knowledge of any
gap or missing time. Years later, as a young wife and mother, the
adult Mary Rose persuades her husband to take her to the same
island. Again she vanishes: this time for a period of decades. When
she is found again, she is not a single day older and has no
awareness of the passage of time. In the interim, her son has grown
to adulthood and is now physically older than his mother.

Picnic at Hanging
Rock

Picnic at Hanging Rock (and
its successful film) is about a group of
schoolgirls who
disappear in mysterious circumstances is often thought to be a true
story. This belief was propagated by Joan Lindsay, the author of the fictional
book: there are no newspaper accounts of the event, nor any record
of search parties. Neither had anybody searched for the girls
between the supposed disappearance and the book's publication - a
gap of over sixty years.

[1]; "When hearing
the news that the story never really happened, people have broken
down in tears and thrown hysterics. "They obviously can't handle the
truth," says one website [2]. There is
obviously, in some people, a need for mystery."

The
Unreals

The
Unreals, a 2007 sci-fi/fantasy novel by Donald Jeffries,
begins with the mysterious disappearance of the main character's
grandfather, and the subject of disappearances in general is
central to the story (with Ambrose Bierce playing a prominent
role).

The
X-Files

Samantha
Mulder, sister of Fox
Mulder, is one of the central characters in the TV series
The
X-Files, and her disappearance plays a central role in the
mythology of the series. Much of Mulder's obsession with the
paranormal, particularly aliens, is explained by reference to
Samantha's disappearance and his belief that she was abducted by
aliens. The mystery of her disappearance is also used as a
recurring plot line with Mulder occasionally forming, and then
usually rejecting, different theories about the true nature of her
disappearance.

Folklore

Fairies

There are several tales of people vanishing at the hands of fairies, pixies and other supernatural folk. An
example is the tale of Jan Coo, who was said to have vanished after
being called away from his Dartmoor home by a mysterious voice. This
story would appear to be a warning against wandering away from
safety on the dangerous moor, woven into a tale involving the
little people to make a better story.

Typical tales of fairy kidnapping are told by William
Butler Yeats in his book, Mythologies.[1]
Yeats describes how many stories of fairy kidnappings involve
newborn babies or newlyweds being carried off by the fairies. In
one such story, a young newly-wed man met a band of fairies who had
stolen his wife for their chief to marry. The fairies appeared at
first to be mortal men, but the young man realized the truth when
he saw them carry his wife away.

Mermaids

There are also many tales of sailors and fishermen being seduced
or abducted by mermaids which are said to lure men away
from land by singing. The mermaid of legend perhaps dates back to
Classical
times (c.f. Aphrodite rising from the sea), and the comb and mirror
are stated in Anna Franklin's The Encyclopedia of Fairies
(Paper Tiger, 2004) to signify the vulva. Thus the sexual nature of
the mermaid seems a long-running theme, perhaps linked to the
possibilities of temptation while at sea.

A very similar scenario is noted in the modern Egyptian folklore
tale Al Naddaha.

Celtic legends exist of the Kelpie. This is a horse which, once harnessed or
mounted, leaps into the nearest body of water, taking its human
captor with it - never to be seen again. Similar stories appear in
Scandinavia.

Hoaxes

Many accounts of mysterious vanishings contain a similar
narrative, and a similar lack of evidence that those involved ever
existed, and can in many cases be dismissed as new versions of
older hoaxes or variations on fictional accounts.[2]

David Lang and Oliver
Larch

The disappearance stories of David Lang and Oliver Larch are
commonly cited hoax examples.

According to the stories surrounding him, on 23 September 1880,
Lang, of Gallatin, Tennessee, was walking across the grounds of
his farm to meet Judge August Peck who was approaching his farm in
a horse and buggy, when Lang vanished mid-step and in full view of
the judge, his wife Chanel and his two children, and the judge's
brother-in-law. The ground around where Lang had been walking was
searched in case he had fallen into a concealed hole, but no trace
was found. The story further states that Lang's children later
called out to him, and heard a disembodied voice calling as if
from a great distance.[3][4]

The story of David Lang was published in Fate
magazine by journalist Stuart Palmer[5],
who claimed that he had been told the story by Lang's daughter.
However, no trace of David Lang nor his family (including his
apparent daughter) was ever found in any records of that period,
and the entire article was later determined to be a hoax likely
inspired by the short story "The Difficulties of Crossing a Field"
by Ambrose
Bierce (1909), collected in his book Can Such Things
Be?.[2]
In 1999, the modern composer David Lang based an opera on
Bierce's story.[6] (The
story has also become a popular urban legend).

The story of Oliver Larch (Sometime known as Lerch or Thomas)
follows a similar pattern to that of David Lang. According to the
narrative, Larch was on his way to collect water from a well one
winter when he vanished, leaving nothing behind but a trail of
footprints in the snow which terminated abruptly, and a series of
terrible cries for help such as "Help, they've got me!" that
appeared to come from above. Larch's story was later found
to be a variation on Charles Ashmore's Trail, published in
1893 by Ambrose Bierce. In some versions, Larch's story is set in
late 19th century Indiana,
in others, it is set in North Wales.[7] One
particular recurring variation was an Oliver Thomas of Rhayader, Radnorshire, mid-Wales
with the date given as 1909.

Myths

American paranormal researcher and ufologistJerome Clark notes
that some areas, such as the Bermuda Triangle, which have a
reputation as sites of frequent vanishings, do not in fact have
significantly more instances than other areas with similar
geographic, tidal or meteorological conditions.[2]

The Norfolk
Regiment

The story of soldiers disappearing into a strange cloud during
the battle of Gallipoli in 1915 is a tale of
spurious origin. According to the story, three observers from the
New Zealand
Army claimed that on an almost cloudless, breezy day, a
loaf-shaped cloud stayed stationary over Hill 60, partly obscuring
it. They watched the unit (usually said to be the "1/4th Norfolk
Regiment") , march into the cloud. The observers waited for almost
an hour, and then the mist seemed to rise, almost vertically, and
joined the rest of the clouds in the sky. The soldiers who entered
were gone, leaving no trace of their presence.[8]

However, the truth is more prosaic. The unit that took Hill 60 (
actually the 1/5th battalion of the Norfolk Regiment)
did not vanish into a cloud, but went on to attack Turkish
positions in the woods beyond Hill 60. They were cut off, and those
that were not killed died later as prisoners of war; there were no
survivors. This was indeed "a mysterious thing" in 1915; however
their fate was ascertained in 1919, when the Graves Registration
Unit searched the battle site.[9] The
remains of 115 men of the battalion were found and buried in Azmak
Commonwealth War Graves Commission Cemetery.

Additionally, there are no official mentions of any kind of
strange cloud during the battle; the New Zealand observers, if they
were even there, were over four miles from the area; the wrong
battalion is named, and called a regiment; the date is given as 21
August instead of the true date nine days earlier; and the story is
not even told until 50 years after the war. [10]

The story probably has its origin in a paragraph from The
Final Report of the Dardanelles Commission:

By some freak of nature Suvla Bay and Plain were wrapped in
a strange mist on the afternoon of 21 August. This was sheer bad
luck as we had reckoned on the enemy's gunners being blinded by the
declining sun and upon the Turk's trenches being shown up by the
evening sun with singular clearness. Actually, we could hardly see
the enemy lines this afternoon, whereas to the westward targets
stood out in strong relief against the luminous light.

The "Vanished Battalion" of the Norfolks (including men from Sandringham, the royal estate near
King's Lynn) were the subject of a BBC feature-length drama All
the King's Men in 1999. Russian heavy metal band Aria composed the song
"Farewell Norfolk" ("Прощай Норфолк"), based on
this story, for Krov za Krov album.

Paranormal

Unexplained disappearances are often assumed, by some, to have
paranormal or supernatural explanations. In some cases,
people are said to have disappeared into thin air in full view of
witnesses, while in others, witnesses have reported finding
evidence related to a missing person, such as a trail of footprints
that suddenly ends inexplicably.[2]

The existence of the phenomena of paranormal vanishing is
debatable. Many cases have been shown to be spurious, and other
incidents are open to interpretation. The idea of paranormal
vanishing is a popular trope, and many examples of it can be found
in folklore and fiction.

Alternate dimension
hypotheses

Writer John Keel
theorized that many alleged paranormal disappearances might be the
result of tears in the fabric of reality, with people or objects
somehow passing through a hole out of our known set of dimensions
and into another, causing them to become out of step with our world
in terms of time or space, and thus causing them to appear to
vanish.[2][11]
Keel's perspective is shared by Hungarian writer Nandor Fodor, who
related the phenomena to alleged incidents of teleportation, and
loosely described the process as "falling into the fourth
dimension".[12]

In his book Paradox Nicholas R. Nelson proposes that
there are certain locations around the globe that are linked to
magnetic vortexes, or where the boundaries between our set of
dimensions and unknown dimensions are thin enough for people to
pass through given the right conditions, accounting for
disappearances and other alleged paranormal events. Nelson named
the Oregon
Vortex and the Bermuda Triangle as two such locations.[13]

Implausibility
of alternate dimension hypotheses

The Earth rotates on its axis a rate equal to about 1000 miles
per hour (mph) at the equator, and it travels through space at over
67,100 mph (108,000 kilometers per hour) while circling the Sun. In
addition, the entire Solar System, with the Sun, is traveling
through space at 137 miles per second, or about 492,000 mph (220
kilometers per second), while circling the Galactic core.
Furthermore, the Galaxy itself, and our Solar System with it, is
moving through space at 373 miles per second, or about 1.34 million
miles per hour (600 kilometers per second), roughly speaking.
Therefore the Earth travels at that speed (373 miles per second) in
addition to all of the other speeds at which it moves through space
with the Sun, around the Sun, and in its own rotation. So, our
planet is looping around the Galaxy while simultaneously hurtling
through space at 373 miles per second while whizzing around the Sun
and spinning like a top. The notion that certain locations on the
surface of this planet can be "linked to magnetic vortexes" in
another dimension is so implausible as to be essentially ludicrous.
(See related articles on Earth, Solar System, and Galaxy).

Time slip
hypotheses

A time slip is an
alleged paranormal phenomenon in which a person, or group of
people, travel through time through supernatural (rather than
technological) means. As with all paranormal phenomena, the
objective reality of such experiences is disputed.